


Arospec headcanons for Arospec Awareness Week 2017

by Nocticola



Series: Nocti's meta [5]
Category: Angel: the Series, Bones (TV), MacGyver (TV 1985), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Secret asian man, Sirens (TV 2014)
Genre: Aro headcanons, Aromantic, Aromantic Awareness Week, Aromantic Characters, Arospec awareness week, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 07:20:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9982589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nocticola/pseuds/Nocticola
Summary: Me talking about my arospec headcanonsWritten originally on tumblrCh1 Kate LockleyCh2 Claire 'Stats' BenderCh3 Angus MacGyver ('85)Ch4 Temperance BrennanCh5 Charlie RutherfordCh6 Jennifer Walters





	1. Kate Lockley

Arospec Awareness Week Day 1: Aromantic/Acespec: Aro/Gray-ace Kate Lockley (Elisabeth Röhm, Angel 1999-2001)

"But no, I don’t need rescuing. I gave up on “knight in shining armor” a while ago. I don’t expect to find him at the International House of Posers. I sound like a big hypocrite, don’t I? Ragging on this place? I came here almost every night. How else are you gonna meet somebody outside work? It’s this or sit home alone in the dark. I always say that a man that loves animals is a man you can trust, I just have a hard time, you know, trusting people. Male people, particularly. In a place like this, nobody will show you who they really are. Everybody’s too busy trying to get whatever it is they’re looking for. 

Angel: What are you looking for?

Kate: Depends on how many daiquiris I’ve had. Oh, God, way to come off like a drunken sl*t.Sl*t’s better than a hypocrit, right? I’m moving up?– I’m a self-flagellating hypocrit sl*t. What was your question?– I’m just trying to make a connection. The more I come to places like this, the harder it gets.-[Anyway, this is close to home]- I was gonna ask if you wanted to go someplace more quiet." [1x2 Lonely Hearts] 

—

During Ace Awareness Week I made a post* about how she gives me an a-spec vibe, I couldn’t really say anything more than that then. But now, I think she very well might fit under this category. I could see her being gray-ace as well as aromantic.

The original photoset is from her intro episode where she’s actually an undercover cop but I think with the other episodes she gets, it’s save to say that she is being mostly truthful here about her own feelings about dating. I could see her trying to connect with people without knowing/understanding that she’s aromantic while occasionally experiencing sexual attraction, and that is one reason why it’s so hard for her. Her father worries about the fact that she’s always been alone and not dating anyone. She does experience some attraction towards Angel and maybe her father isn’t wrong about her ‘leaning the other way’, so I could see her as m-spec too, for whatever attraction she does experience. 

*https://demisexualnathanvuornos.tumblr.com/post/155773094968/nocticola-nocticola-10-images-f-elisabeth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://demisexualnathanvuornos.tumblr.com/post/157528356433/13-caps-of-elisabeth-r%C3%B6hm-as-kate-lockley-from


	2. Claire 'Stats' Bender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From Sirens

Arospec Awareness Week Day 2: Claire ‘Stats’ Bender (Maura Kidwell; Sirens 2014-15) aromantic/allosexual character

I’m a sex machine. What? Or I think I might be part machine, because I like sex without any emotional attachment.

I think this is pretty much canon for her. She’s very much a bit character so she’s never really the focus, and even though this is the show with a canon asexual character, I guess they were unaware of romantic orientations so they didn’t label her like that. There are also issues with that line, very much conveying the aros=robots stereotype. She’s also canonically has OCD. She shows attraction towards at least men so she’s possibly heterosexual or m-spec.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://demisexualnathanvuornos.tumblr.com/post/157495842063/arospec-awareness-week-day-2-claire-stats


	3. Angus 'Mac' MacGyver (1985)

Arospec Awareness Week Fandom Challenge Day 3: Arospec and Acespec character: Gray Aro & Gray Ace Angus MacGyver (MacGyver 1985-1992)

"Lulu: 39? 39 and you’ve never been married? That tells me one of 2 things, either your afraid of commitment, or you’re afraid of commitment.

—

Lulu: Have you ever been in love, like really on love? 

Angus MacGyver: Yeah, once."

———

OK, so this show was THE SHOW for preteen me and I used to love it a lot and watch it during mid/late 90s. The reboot version made me go :/, like someone younger than me should not play MacGyver, damnit. But anyway, someone put a demisexual reading of the that show on my dash which made me go, oh interesting! Let’s maybe check it out someday. So the show started here during January and, like, wow, it seems really Straight to me, with a dash of no homo/homoeroticism which bummed me, I remembered to original not being very sexual. Luckily for me, MacGyver is one of the constantly rerun shows here so I decided to actually start watching the reruns. First I read the Wikipedia page on him to remind myself if my memory was correct and here’s what it said: 

#While never being in an actual relationship, he is always on good terms with his past acquaintances, of which there are many. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_MacGyver#Personality)

Nice!

So, I started watching the reruns from mid-s5 and my memories where correct! He is very much not interested in any of the romance drama that some episodes have. Important episode for my gray-aroace reading is 5x18 The Lost Amadeus. It actually has the fake dating trope and MacGyver says that he has been in love once, hence gray-romantic, but Lulu’s kissing him leaves him confused and bothered and there’s no romance/sex stuff with the fake dating trope. He even introduces Lulu to one of his friends, he’s basically more of a matchmaker than someone who is interested in any of this himself. I know he has had occasional love interests in the past and in the finale it’s revealed that he has a son, so I’m thinking the gray spectrum identity for both romantic and sexual orientations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://demisexualnathanvuornos.tumblr.com/post/157533411378/arospec-awareness-week-fandom-challenge-day-3


	4. Temperance 'Bones' Brennan

Day 4: Arospec/Allosexual: Temperance Brennan (Bones 2005-2017) demiromantic/allo-/heterosexual

Brennan is a character that is very important to me but who I also have very complicated feelings about. Especially as far as aro/ace headcanons go, since she is semi-canonically autistic/ASD, so there is some iffiness, possibly. But anyway, demiromantic reading of her makes so much sense. She did not trust/believe/understand romance/romantic attraction for a long time. It took her 6ish years of knowing Booth very closely to develop romantic attraction to him. She expressed a lot of worries that she’s ‘wrong’ for not feeling the way others do, she rejected Booth in the 100th because she ‘doesn’t have an open heart’ and couldn’t love Booth the way she knew he loved her. She eventually got there, which gives credence to her being demiromantic instead of aromantic.

One of the reasons I’ve also had issues at looking at her from ace/aro perspective is her relationship with sex. I’m a demisexual and alloromantic, so that aspect has always been kinda confusing to me. Because she does experience sexual attraction, thinks it’s ‘realer’ than romantic attraction (for a long time), sees sex as a natural need, and has had a ‘relationship’ with someone purely based on sexual attraction (3x6 The Man in the Outhouse), so her relationship with sex has always seemed more ‘typical’ (although ‘masculine’, since women aren’t supposed to feel like that about sex, *eyeroll*) than her relationship with romance. So I think her being allosexual, I guess heterosexual, would explain that ‘disparity’ that has confused me about her for a long time. Honestly, I think this view helps me understand her even more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://demisexualnathanvuornos.tumblr.com/post/157543110868/day-4-arospecallosexual-temperance-brennan


	5. Charlie Rutherford

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Check out Secret Asian Man comic strip

Arospec Awareness Week Fandom Challlenge: Aromantic & Asexual character:

Charlie Rutherford from Secret Asian Man

He was in a daily comic strip, which is probably why they only talk about romantic relationships and different types of love instead of sexual things but he is pretty clearly aromantic and would probably also identify as asexual if he used the split attraction model. He is happy alone with his cat his nerdy interests and doesn’t seem to pursue relationships other than familial and friendships.

The cast intro calls him ‘probably asexual’ which makes sense since people are often unaware of romantic orientations or prioritizing them. But again sex isn’t a topic that gets brought up in the comic, so a different view of his sexuality is open to interpretation, but he is definitely aromantic. And a Jedi on MySpace.

ETA: There is a storyline in the comics which is arophobic, unfortunately. SAM's wife thinks Charlies should date and sets him up with a woman who is very unsuitable to him in general and when that doesn't work out I think she tries a different woman, but that's not explored. There are moments were they express sentiments of 'oh poor you' for him being aromantic but except for that dating arc (during which he is very not into it) he is mostly portrayed as normal and happy.

http://web.archive.org/web/20080706085058/http://www.comics.com/comics/sam/html/cast_sam.html

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://nocticola.tumblr.com/tagged/charlie+rutherford  
> https://demisexualnathanvuornos.tumblr.com/tagged/charlie-rutherford


	6. Jennifer Walters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> https://demisexualnathanvuornos.tumblr.com/post/175416628538/aggressively-arospec-week-2018-jennifer

Aggressively Arospec Week 2018: Jennifer Walters/She Hulk (John Byrne/Dan Slott/Mariko Tamaki)

So, for this year’s aro awareness week I made this: 

https://demisexualnathanvuornos.tumblr.com/post/171015346598/aromantic-spectrum-awareness-week-fandom-challenge 

It was one of those ‘I kinda feel an aspec(here: aro) vibe but not quite sure yet’, things I sometimes get, largely inspired by Hulk #11(2017) . So, for this arospec week I thought I’d try to make something more substantial. I quickly went through John Byrne’s Sensational She Hulk and Dan Slott’s arcs to see if there is more of that vibe or if it’s just Mariko Tamaki’s post-trauma version of Jennifer. (Charles Soule’s run has no romance that I can remember) 

1) She is definitely allosexual. She appreciates hotness and loves sex and sometimes does casual hook ups. (Peter David’s run has her identifying as not-lesbian as odd as that sounds, and is probably meant to mean she’s straight but you can’t necessarily rule out a non-lesbian wlw identity) 

_Thundra: How did you meet Jen?_

_Jazinda: Interstellar lesbian dating service._

_Jennifer: She’s kidding. She loves to kid. She’s a crack-up, that Jaz._

_Thundra: So you are not–_

_Jennifer: Nope._

_Thundra: Pity._ (She Hulk #34, 2009) 

2) She definitely had something real with Wyatt Wingfoot (which is great, because I ship them) and probbaly the main reason they never ended up staying together is because comic books. But you can kinda get a vibe that it doesn’t work out for a reason that might be that Jen is not quite up for a traditional romantic relationship. 

_Jennifer: I’m sorry, I just–_

_Wyatt: Don’t be sorry._

_Jennifer: No, I am though, see it’s– It’s that.. you were the one, you know? My one, anyway._

_Wyatt: The one that got away._

_Jennifer: Yes. Right. Exactly. The one that got away, but.. I just feel so–. Wyatt Wingfoot, you’ve remained the yardstick against which everyone else has been measured. Know what I mean? All my good choices, all my bad choices… Nothing ever came close to you. Do you… Have you thought about me, like that, at all? we almost got married. Do I– Did I– I mean, to you did we–._

[Matt Fraction FF #4 2013] 

3) So many of her damn villains want to marry her. And she was tricked into not only staying with someone she was not happy with but eventually she married him (Man-Wolf/John Jonas Jameson Jr?/III?) because of Starfox’s seduction power. 

Her reaction to the villain weddings is always disgust, of course, but it’s unclear if she feels the same way about marriage overall. She was essentially long-term roofied when she got married and it was a disaster. 

Of course, her being arospec who gets threatened with forced marriage constantly is an iffy thing, rep-wise (I mean, this is all headcanon, no one’s actually writing her consciously as arospec) but that mostly just means that John Byrne was a hack, not matter his 4th wall breaking. 

Basically the way marriage is a part of her narrative is kinda interesting yet frustrating from an arospec pov. 

4) The She-Hulk Diaries (Marta Costa) 

I have a lot of love for this romance novel-esque version of her and I must say, the way she is about her love interest could be read as rather demiromantic now that I think about it. 

5) She’s green, so she’s naturally ours. She’s also sometimes gray, so she’s definitely ours as arospec 


End file.
